THE SERIAL OKDER ERKONEOUS. 145 



order, have naturally fallen into the belief that there is an 

 order which truly represents the facts — ^have persevered in 

 seeking such an order; quite overlooking the j)revious 

 question whether it is likely that Nature has consulted the 

 convenience of book-making. 



For German j^hilosophers, who hold that Nature is 

 ^' petrified intelligence," and that logical forms are the 

 foundations of all things, it is a consistent hypothesis that 

 as thought is serial, Nature is serial ; but that M. Comte, 

 who is so bitter an opponent of all anthropomorphism, 

 even in its most evanescent shapes, should have committed 

 the mistake of imposing upon the external world an ar- 

 rangement which so obviously springs from a limitation of 

 the human consciousness, is somewhat strange. And it is 

 the more strange when we call to mind how, at the outset, 

 M. Comte remarks that in the beginning " toutes les sciences 

 sont cultwees simultamment par les memes esjjrits / " that 

 this is " inevitable et meme indispensable y " and how he 

 further remarks that the different sciences are " comme 

 les diver ses branches d'un tronc luiique.^'* Were it not 

 accounted for by the distorting influence of a cherished 

 hypothesis, it would be scarcely possible to understand 

 how, after recognising truths like these, M. Comte should 

 have persisted in attempting to construct " une echelle en- 

 cyclopcdique?'' 



The metaphor which M. Comte has here so inconsis- 

 tently used to express the relations of the sciences — • 

 branches of one trunk — is an approximation to the truth, 

 though not the truth itself. It suggests the facts that the 

 sciences had a common origin ; that they have been de- 

 veloping simultaneously ; and that they have been from 

 time to time dividing and sub-dividing. But it does not 

 suggest the yet more important fact, that the divisions and 

 sub-divisions thus arising do not remain separate, but now 

 and again re-unite in direct and indirect ways. They 



